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Charles Croskey

Charles Croskey

A mystical stillness spreads over the coast of Norway as the sun slides slowly into the sea. Shadows lengthen, crevices seem to deepen, and scattered caves appear. Gull cries echo through the fjords. Earlier today, fishing boats dotted the waters, trolling for the day's catch. But now the boats are docked by the villages, scattered handfuls of cottages clinging to narrow stretches of beach.

A dozen student engineers wearing hard hats and holding walkie talkies pace the cement floor of Penn State's Bryce Jordan Center. Two of them fiddle with a laptop computer. Wires stretch from the computer to velocity sensors on either side of the pool. A handful of students and professors watch from the bleachers. The countdown begins.

We aren't talking about small supernatural beings, although these sprites and elves are elusive. They are bright flashes in the atmosphere, optical occurrences that extend through the mesosphere and stratosphere into the lower ionosphere. Lee Marshall, a graduate student in electrical engineering, and his colleague Walt Lyons, a meteorologist with FMA Research of Colorado, have discovered that they are linked to a particular kind of lightning.